Being Hannah
by rebeccacherub
Summary: A hurt/comfort fic about what happened after Hannah Wells was poisoned. A non-canon where she survived.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Hannah Wells gripped the black punching bag. After Damien died Hannah was furious and sad and ready for everything that was to come. She punched the bag, her fists bear, raw. She closed her eyes and attacked the punching bag. Then she dropped onto the mat and did ab exercises and pounded the dumbells.

After the FBI fired her, Hannah Wells joined to CIA. She hated being chained to a desk so she was excited and ready to solve the puzzle when she found out about the virus that targets people of color.

Then she found the lab. She busted in and there was a man there. He sprayed her with the gas and she fell down the staircase and landed on her back, outside, paralyzed. She couldn't breathe and she gasped and isn't this pain so beautiful, a part of the job, the reason to fight. There was so much terror and evil in the world and Hannah was put there to make some little part of it go away. Sometimes the bad guy died with her gun and sometimes the bad guy was apprehended. The good people were not supposed to die.

She was in so much pain. And then the flames. Hannah closed her eyes and prayed. Her whole body ached and there was something in the ache that made her remember every bad guy she punished, every citizen she saved. She tried to crawl away from the flames. The flames were red and orange and icy hot and Hannah choked on her own breath and the sky was dark and black and the stars were running away in the sky, holding the constellations together and fighting like she was to survive again, this time.

Somehow the paralysis faded away and Hannah felt her body contract and her muscles contract and she knew all she had to do was focus on her training. All of it was for this. All of the martial arts, all of the punching and lifting and fighting and investigating, it was to prepare her for this moment. This moment where she fought to live and somehow she crawled away from the fire, out of the building and into the shiny dark. Her body was in agony but even this, it was what she lived for. She could finally breathe again and her body had burns on it and some of the poisonous gas was still in her.

Chapter 2

The CIA faked Hannah's death, but the pain she felt was real. The only difference was that she survived the attempt on her life, and now she was ready to throw herself into a new assignment. It felt like everyone she got close to died and now was the time to fight for them, for their memory, for her own death that she didn't really die.

To be continued….


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 3

This sacred pain is there. We must nurture it as it is our secret strength. We must hold our pain close to our hearts. Sometimes this torment is beautiful.

Hannah remembers crawling away from the flames. She stumbled and tried to speak but she could not. She knew she could trust her training, she could trust her experience in missions. She could trust herself. She crawled to a place under a weeping willow tree and rested her weary head against the trunk. She felt the mud and the grass and the weeds. She could not breathe very well and she was choking and she was nauseous. She writhed on the ground sinking into the earth. She asked herself, am I leaving now, am I sinking into the earth and becoming someone else, something else? She thought, I have been on this path of the warrior my whole life.

She closed her eyes and trusted. A part of Hannah started to pray. She tried not to panic. She tried to remain calm. Tragically, the fear she had was that she would lose the chase, that she would never get to be an agent again. She let her pounding heart rest and she heaved into the acerbic mud. She drifted off to sleep and started to dream. Don't be afraid in pain and death, for you are only sleeping. And Hannah let the paralytic gas put her to sleep. She stopped trying to scream. She slid into the earth. She let the roots of the tree watch for her; she let the green leaves dance for her; she let the mud be her bed.

_Hannah found herself on the bridge talking to Damien. Damien pulled out a ring and told Hannah that he wanted to marry her. He was a spy, Hannah knew, like her, and for a moment she forgot. She forgot herself, for this is just a dream, and she reflected that Damien may be on the opposing team but even still, somehow he made her love him. She loved him and she loved his daughter. _

_In the dream Damien crawls up to the top of the bridge and jumps into the ocean. The murky waters takes him and Hannah wanders off, running as fast as she can on the bridge, terrified for some reason but not really knowing why. She ran until there were no more cars and she got lost in a jungle filled with big cats like jaguars and tigers. The creatures were not animals; they were fierce warrior cats put on earth to defend the weak. But Hannah certainly wasn't weak._

_The orange and black spotted animal leaped ahead in-between the trees. It dug its claws into the grass and it ran as fast as it could. Hannah could hear orange and green frogs jumping and cawing, she could hear birds singing and she started to realize, this is not real. Is this jungle what comes next? Am I dead?_

_But no. Death would not take Hannah yet. She would fight it. She dug with claws like a tiger and fought the mud. She fought the thorns and the poisonous gas and the dream started to end._

_She fell back into dreamconsciousness. This time she was at Church, a place she never really took the time to go to. Suddenly the ground melted and ravens started yelling. The dark birds cawed and rested their bodies on the steeple of the church. The fought and screamed. The ravens come to carry away the dead, to eat the dead, to warn people._

When Hannah woke up she was still lying by the tree. She could breathe a little bit better and some of her pain had subsided but it was not gone. She did a reality check: is this real, am I alive or is this a dream and am I sleeping underground? Is this what comes next?

But it was not time for that yet. Hannah felt pain so severe that it served the purpose of reminding her that she was alive. So alive. So she thanked her pain for being there and promised herself she would stop the terrorist geneticists who wanted to wipe out people who weren't Caucasian. She thanked the pain because she remembered other times, times when she was shot by the suspect she was chasing and didn't succumb to death. She remembered fighting for the USA and not only that but fighting to do the right thing, fighting for the mission. There was always a mission. Right now the mission was to survive. She had to do that before she could do anything else.

She thought about getting up and trying to get back home and she sat up against the tree trunk. She held onto the tree and pushed herself onto her feet and then she started to run like the tiger in her dream. Hannah was an agent and a spy and to do that she had to be an athlete, a martial artist. The best athletes carry their pain and train hard and ignore the pain. It doesn't mean the pain was never there; sometimes it meant the pain was the fuel to the bomb, sometimes the pain was the demon on the shoulder that whispered stop and adrenaline and the love of the battle was the angel that gently whispered, keep going, you are strong. And that was how it was now. Her whole body ached like superman on kryptonite and she let that pain be her fuel to run faster than humanly possible. Hannah ran until she knew where she was and then she dug through her pockets for her keys and sighed with relief when her hands gripped them.

She ran up the steps and unlocked the door. She was so tired. So tired physically and mentally and spiritually. She dropped her keys on the floor and stumbled up the stairs. The lights were off and it was dark. She found her couch and sat down and started to cry. She didn't want to cry but the tears just started coming on their own. There was such injustice, so much terror that Hannah witnessed and experienced. She let her eyes close again and she knew that she just had to let herself heal. The tears came and went and her body heaved and sighed and cracked and she knew she was infected and still could die but also she knew she still could survive. The tears came and her body was ripping apart and she sat on the couch and didn't go into her bedroom and sleep on her bed because you cant die in your sleep when you aren't on a death bed.

To be continued….


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 4

_Searing pain. Icy red hot rod. The smell of sweet roses, acrid vapor that smelled almost sweet like a pear or a goji berry. Exotic. She relives it in her sleep. Stumbling down cement stair case. The lab exploding. Searing pain. Orange and red hell._

**Meanwhile…**

Tom Kirkman and the special forces go to Hannah's funeral. They have no clue that Hannah is alive and sick and struggling. At this point even the CIA and the FBI think Hannah is dead. The director hands the service reward to Hannah's mother. Tears stream down everybody's faces.

There was no body, but there was the explosion

**Meanwhile….**

Hannah is in and out of consciousness. She stumbles downstairs and knows she needs to tell everybody that she is alive. There are second degree burns all over her body. She was lucky; there was only one third degree burn. She closed her eyes and focused on the pain. Finally she got up and decided she had to call someone. Not her boss, not right now.

Hannah calls Aaron Shore. He tells her he just left her funeral and Hannah laughed and said how is that possible, I'm alive. She was alive but barely alive. Aaron came to pick her up, because he cares and wanted to make sure she was okay and that it was real, she was alive.

After Hannah buzzed Aaron in the two civil servants sat at Hannah's table together.

"You look terrible," Aaron said.

"I feel terrible," Hannah said. She wondered if whatever disease she was infected with was contagious.

"We have to get you to a hospital," Aaron said.

"No, no I'm fine," Hannah said.

"They told us you were infected and that the building blew up. I don't know how you survived it," Aaron said. Tears were running down his face. No one deserved to suffer like that.

Hannah wanted to jump back into her work. She stood up and started pacing. Aaron said, "Come on. Get in my car. You really need medical attention."

Hannah gripped the marble table and closed her eyes and sighed. Aaron Shores put his arm on her shoulder. "Come on," Aaron said. "You'll be fine. You'll see." Hannah tried hard not to cry but the tears came anyways. She closed her eyes and held onto the table like it was the solid rock she needed.

Aaron helped Hannah walk out of her house and into his car. She stumbled a little and then got in the car.

"Your parents are going to be relieved you're alive," Aaron said while he was driving. Hannah closed her eyes, relieved by the presence of a friend. She breathed in deep and ignored everything. She was alive, which meant she would be okay. She never had been a woman of faith but this time Hannah closed her eyes and thanked God for the strength that saved her and for the friends that would keep her sane during her journey to recover from the poisonous gas and explosion burns. _Yahweh, I will survive, _Hannah whispered to herself. _This is temporary. Yahweh, I will survive._

Hannah closed her eyes. She was finally safe. She would find more journeys, more crimes to solve, intelligence to discover. She could forget for now, go to a safe happy place.

"Stay awake," Aaron said, worried that Hannah was succumbing to her disease, worried that she would still die after all. "Try to stay awake."

Hannah saw a black door in the back of her mind. She focused on the door, what might be behind it. The door turned a shiny white. She remembered stumbling down the stairs and becoming disoriented. It was re playing in her mind. She forced her eyes open and looked at Aaron.

"Where are we going?" Hannah asked Aaron. She didn't want to go to a hospital; she didn't want to be quarantined in a white room. She didn't want to succumb to death. She didn't want to be chained to a bed. She wanted to be in a dark forest and not lose the forest for the trees. She wanted to dig her feet into the dirt and run as fast as she could.

"The white house," Aaron said. "I know you don't want to go to a hospital. A lot of people who care about you are at the white house. Mike is there. Tom is there. They all want to see you. See that you're alive in their own eyes."

Hannah Wells nodded and forced her eyes open.

"Okay," she said. "Okay."

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Hannah and Aaron sat down in the Oval Office. Tom shook Hannah's hand and apologized for having a funeral for her without looking for her first and not making sure she was alive. He didn't make sure she was okay; he just listened blindly to accusations of her death.

"It was a close call," Hannah Wells joked. At this time she knew she would live. She wanted to get better already so she could jump back in and make sure what happened to her wouldn't happen to anyone else. "I need to get back into it," Hannah said, talking about the mission. She didn't want to sleep; nightmares would come. And every second she was awake she was in pain but that was certainly better than the terror of sleep.

"You need to see a doctor first, agent," Tom said. "You probably need antibiotics or something."

Hannah nodded her head. She knew and was dreading it.

"Lets do it," she said.

Tom called a doctor to come over and the doctor examined Hannah. He told her that she was luck to be alive, that whatever infection she had he had never heard of it. He prescribed antibiotics for the viral gas and an ointment for the burns; that was all he could do. He reassured her that she would be fine and prescribed lots of rest.

He thanked Hannah for serving her country and her God and apologized once more.

Aaron drove Hannah home and walked her in to make sure that she was alright.

"I can pick up that prescription for you if you want," Aaron said.

"You don't have to. I'm a big girl," Hannah said laughing lightly. "Besides, I need to get out of here. I can't just sit here." She didn't want to listen to the silence that was ringing in her loft. She didn't want to listen to her anger against the bioterrorist that infected her and her anger at herself for not knowing better and asking for back-up. Even a beginner agent was expected to do that; to not just barge in but to take precautions and have back-up. She should have known and all of that was ringing in her ears like a bee that would not shut up and leave her alone with her pain. She liked the pain; it reminded herself that she was real. A part of her wanted her attacker to have her pain; a different part of Hannah rose above that and listened to the silent voice that was like an angel, a voice that was there ever since the beginning of the incident. Without that silent voice singing in Hannah's ear she knew she could not have ever survived. She didn't know what it was but it gave her a silent secret strength. She silently thanked it.

_Trust in your training_, it told Hannah. _Trust in your heart._

"Are you sure you're fine?" Aaron asked, interrupting her reverie. Hannah Wells looked at Aaron for a second and she put her bag down and nodded her eyes.

"Yes," Hannah said. "I'm fine."

Aaron left and Hannah wearily walked up the stairs to her living room and collapsed on her couch. She turned on the television and sighed. Later she would go pick up the antibiotics and burn cream. For now all she wanted to do was relax and pretend none of this was real.

To be continued….


End file.
